


Like Blood For Water

by TheSpaceCoyote



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Incest, M/M, also a major guilt complex on Jake's part, cousins falling in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-19
Updated: 2012-04-19
Packaged: 2017-11-03 22:53:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/386882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSpaceCoyote/pseuds/TheSpaceCoyote
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Jake wishes he could wash all that blood away like dirt, because it doesn't mean anything. Jake doesn't love John because of some traditional family devotion warped through close quarters and shared beds."</p>
<p>In which Jake and John share a love that is as wonderful as it is taboo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Blood For Water

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of an AU I've made up with Ahmerst, in which Jake is a farmhand living on his own and John is his cousin and John comes up to spend the summer with Jake and feelings start to happen. 
> 
> I'm willing to admit it may be a bit OOC and dramatic, but in my defense I did write it at like, 2 am. The actual AU will be much more in character, I promise, but for this drabble this is what you get, haha.

 

 

Jake hadn't imagined anything like this would happen when he found out that John--his younger _cousin_ John--was coming to stay at the ranch over the summer.  When John had first arrived, there _had_ been a certain warmth that Jake had felt, but he'd played it off as mere familial affection. But that temperate feeling has long since blossomed into something that shakes Jake to the very core whenever he looks at John or inhales the John's scent or even _thinks_ about John.  He's never had such horrifying inclinations before, and right now it's threatening to break him apart.   
  
Because it's wrong. It's so, so wrong.   
  
Jake is wrong and dirty and _filthy,_ and his thoughts and actions are completely inexcusable. That’s what he tells himself every time he’s near John and the devil of temptation worms its way into his head and speaks tongues that tell him to grab John and throw him down into the hay of the old barn and do _terrible_ and _wretched_ and _filthy_ things to him.   
  
It’s horrible enough that both he and John are male, but the fact that the two of them are related jams nails further into the casket of Jake’s rustic morals—the homespun creeds that his grandma instilled in him, with the lines between familial and romantic love not explicit but still implied. Jake isn’t a fool, he knows it is wrong, knows it is evil and shameful but— _but_ —  
  
But he can’t _stop_. He tries so very hard to not think of John in such a vile fashion, he bends on his knees in the farmhouse foyer and hugs himself and sobs and prays whenever the thought of doing such shameful things to John enters his head and refuses to leave him be.   
  
Jake tries for months to convince himself of his own sin, digging his nails into his palms and hoping some divine asceticism will be granted on him so that he can stop these terrible feelings for good. He tries to force them down, even when John blithely continues snuggling up to him on the couch, or falling asleep on his shoulder, or sliding into Jake’s bed after a bad dream. And Jake _tries_ , each time John comes to share a bed he tries to refrain from holding him and breathing into the scent of his soft hair but he _can’t_ and instead Jake expends his remaining energy holding back his burning tears.   
  
He tries to hate himself enough so that these feelings will stop.   
  
But one night, while John is asleep and lying in Jake’s lap after dozing off during a movie, Jake just _cannot_. When John is so sweet and silent and Jake’s heart is throbbing he cannot convince himself that this is wrong. It doesn’t feel wrong, it feels right and Jake cannot deny it any longer that he is in love with his cousin. His own blood.    
  
And that time he can’t stop and he wakes John up with his tears as he lifts him up close, and John is confused but still holds him back like he always does. He hushes Jake, his small, soft hands smoothing over Jake’s back and working out the knots of his self-hatred. That night, Jake takes a deep breath, and he swallows—choking down all the shame and guilt of betrayed filial mores—and he exhales into John’s hair.   
  
From then on, Jake no longer curses himself. He still feels the filthiness whenever he touches John, whenever he holds him, but it is no longer born of a hatred for himself. Jake has not sinned. It is the world that raised him to believe his love to be an abomination of the Lord that has sinned. It is what Jake now finds hateful.   
  
He breaks down after kissing John for the first time, sobbing into his shoulder as his nails dig into John’s shirt. Jake expects John to be sickened by him, to believe in the hate and sin of the outside world, but instead John cups his face and raises Jake’s tearstained eyes to meet his. Jake tells him then, tells him just how much he loves him, his words tumbling out of his mouth like water from a sieve. Jake expects it, expects the fruit of the hateful world to have already laid seed in John’s head, but  to his shock John does not reject him. He seems to understand Jake’s pain unquestioningly as he touches their foreheads together, eyebrows slackened in sympathy.  And when he speaks, John repeats Jake’s words, his own voice just as choked with sadness as his cousin’s.   
  
_The world is unfair._   
  
Unfair enough to constrain a love so young and unbridled on the basis of something as coarse as blood. Jake wishes he could wash all that blood away like dirt, because it doesn’t mean anything. Jake doesn’t love John because of some traditional family devotion warped through close quarters and shared beds.   
  
Jake’s guilt is filthy and his shame is filthy but his _love_ is not. He loves John wholeheartedly; wants to care for him and treat him well and keep him close and safe and _wanted_. He wants John here on the ranch, here in a clandestine pocket far away from the reaches of a society that would keep them apart and degrade their love to abomination. He whispers this in the aftermath of their intimacy while holding John close, and John agrees in a dreamy fashion that speaks not of true consideration but rather of hopeful impossibility.   
  
Jake understands, in these quiet moments when John has fallen asleep on his bare chest, just how much he needs the other boy by his side. He understands that he no longer can bear living alone on the farm, and it is not sinful of him to need somebody. He is not some mystic, some hermit who can survive through depriving himself of affection. He _needs_ John.   
  
Before he falls asleep, Jake shifts John up so that his lips can graze across the boy’s forehead in a gesture that blooms a happiness and want so pure in his chest that Jake feels his heart will surely burst.   
  
And when Jake finally goes to sleep, soothed by the warmth cradling his body, he knows that he is not filthy, that he is not wrong. It is the world that would deny him his love of John that is wrong.


End file.
